By Dan Bodine
Center on Social Minimalism
“Everybody has their price,” the old saying goes. “Never say you’ll never do it.” Now the pharmaceutical industry is putting journalists in its cross-hairs of people to “buy.” Along with the prescribing doctors, the story goes. Dr. Mercola has the news in a recent article entitled “Are journalists the drug industry’s newest lackeys?” Link to it is here.
Hee, hee. “Favor fees” they call them in Mexico. Aka, el mordido. How does someone wanting a “favor” of some sort instinctively know who will and who absolutely won’t take a bribe? Huh?
All the world’s relative, right? Well, I wanna protest. Nobody’s ever offered me a bribe. That I was aware of or can remember. Honest Injun! To get one, I sure would’ve changed my body language, dour expression, whatever, I‘d sworn at times. Dire, I was.
Nobody needs extra income as much as journalists and poor border j.p’s, were my thoughts often. Where’s the people with the mulah? The dinero? The mordidas? Maybe we can work sumpthin’ out. I‘m hurting here, damn it!
Remember in Cleburne, TX, once a prominent realtor having a hard time with the City of Cleburne’s public works department on some project. I was city editor at the Times-Review then.
One day he took me to one of his houses to photograph a wall urinal he claimed the city had made him install in a bathroom (at his added expense, natch!), instead of a normal commode.
Good photo I made. Ol’ Theo a sitting on the bathtub with his left arm extended to the wall urinal, hugging it like you’d embrace an unruly stepchild--ugly repulsion all over his face at how he was being mistreated, is how I remember it. Good story, it would’ve been.
Only problem was that I managed to find Andy Anderson, the city’s public works director, by phone in Denver, CO, shortly before deadline; and thus rewrote the story and pulled the photo. Andy was there interviewing for a job I think. I knew Andy and trusted him; he was part of our darts night boys.
“Andy, what’s this about you making Theo put a pisser on the wall?”
“Ain’t so! He’s just mad over something.”
Can’t remember the why or what it was part; it’d made a good follow-up story though all by itself. But as badly as I needed money then, I think the only nudge I’d needed to’ve gone with the story as I had it written (a hatchet job, it was) was if I’d been given a “favor fee” of only a few hundred dollars or so.
As an alcoholic--in those days, too, I’d later explain to AA groups, when I’d find myself driving from one bank to another to kite a check just to buy more whiskey--the only excuse I’d need was someone crossing my palm with some free currency.
Were they crazy for not doing it? It’s supposed to be common practice, right? To grease Life’s wheels in your direction? Well, all my life it’s been like that! Left out! Where do I go to protest being excluded? Some of these folks clearly have violated my civil rights! Hee, hee.
Same thing later in Presidio. As the only judge in town--in a border town, no less--with wrecks, civil suits, evictions, etc., to all divvy up, you’d think a person should really have ample opportunities for making some serious money. Not me! Why? Because I was a gringo? Smelled bad? No habla Espanol? (Pay a translator, damn it! Double your benefits!) Or just too stupid to put out the signals?
Signing up new babies, for instance. Role as a state registrar. Granting immediate citizenship, this job was. No doctor in town. Not on this side, anyway! And with the only hospital in the whole Big Bend area 90 miles away, surely you’re going to have someone acting as a midwife in town to help out those few unable or unwilling to make that long trip. Surely. Was there a chance for me to make some money in it? Never came!
But the babies did. Bunches of them! Every few days sometimes it seemed! No local or county official in any way wanted to get involved advising me on it. Only the county judge, a friend, once advised, Personally, Dan, I wouldn’t do it.
But the alternative? I asked back. What do you do? A baby’s a baby!
Finally, What do I do with all these? I remember asking a bewildered attorney by phone once in the justice court training center in Austin. A Far West Texas border community deep in the Chihuahuan Desert is a little difficult to explain to someone wet behind the ears.
Well, if they were born there in Presidio you’ve got to register them, I was told simply. Don’t you violate anyone’s rights!
Jeesh! I swore at times that staff at that center was in cahoots with the state’s trial lawyers. Or way, way too cautious! What about my rights? And what about common sense? These calls I got, to come to a house to observe a new baby, almost always were on weekends, or at nights.
Didn’t take long, of course, even for someone as slow as I am to smell a fish. A look back thru previous registration files showed something like 60-70 births a year sometimes in this one small community. Most of the moms were from Ojinaga I suspected, across the river, over here visiting relatives or friends.
Once I remember the court clerk and I following a trail of blood from a home’s driveway on the outskirts of town, into the house and down a long hallway, and finally to the mother, still on the floor. From upriver somewhere. Probably from across. Smiling nervously. But her baby had been born in the United States, and here was the ol’ judge, ready to make the infant legal.
But where’s my fair share? I often thought. Aren’t you suppose to pay for these kind of favors? The county sure isn’t paying me extra for it. I want my mordita! I probably felt.
So this had to stop, yes. Started making them sign Declarations or Affidavits of Facts, under oath, describing the background some. And I made photos. Parents, baby, and midwife all. If I was going to be investigated, I wanted something to take into court with me.
Then I started making the mothers get an examination slip from the local office of the state department of public health. Make sure something had happened first, I wanted to. Hee, hee. Most were honest births, of course; some the clinic would call and say no way no how.
And eventually it stopped. Stricter inspection procedures and longer lines at the port of entry from Mexico kicked in, too. Generally I started to see area newspapers carrying more birth announcements from the hospitals from families in Presidio. And my annual registrations dropped down to 2-3, or sometimes zero.
A big worry--of granting an illegal a citizenship (with all the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer benefits associated with it)--was lifted from me.
But I was being watched, too. I always sensed that. A regional federal enforcement officer from Alpine made the comment once in the office, Judge, you’re the only Presidio JP our office hasn’t had to investigate in the past 20 years or so for bribery.
Well, that’s only because I’m a gringo, I laughed. Or too stupid. Maybe both! Or sumpthin’!
He smiled. The common practice was for pre-arrangements to be made with the midwife for say $1,000. She’d take $500. And give $500 to the judge. Zip, zip, and zap. A nice secondary income.
Mexico and other Third World countries are awash with such practices, of course. Use to be. The main reason is the abysmal low wages paid to government employees. That and the people are not stupid! They know how to survive.
Journalists weren’t exactly born falling off turnip wagons either. Most of 'em. Many though have fallen from other wagons. Many times. And the fact their salaries have dropped even lower now vis a vis a continued decline in traditional newspaper circulation and revenue doesn’t bode well for them either, of course. They're ripe for pluckin'.
The fact that Big Pharma is now going after them speaks loudly also how desperate drug companies are, too, to keep their high profits. We have a classic morality play in the making, folks. Again, here’s the link to the well respected Dr. Mercola’s story.
So it’s going to be interesting to watch how this one plays out, yes. Uh...Maybe…
“Yo, Jethro! ‘Ya still got a reporter’s notepad or two laying around. Huh? Got this here little idea. Want to earn a little extra SPENDING money?
"...JETHRO! Where 'ya goin'??!"
Hee, hee. Must of heard my wife coming after me.
"Yo!"
--- 30 ---
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